Massive Twitter buzz is going around about China and its lockdowns. One tweet mentioned that Bloomberg noted that there were 477 cargo ships waiting to deliver resources into the country.
With Shanghai in a near total lockdown, this is a map of the commercial ships currently waiting offshore to be loaded and offloaded of goods; exacerbating global supply chain woes pic.twitter.com/Md6PtpF3VE
— Scott Gottlieb, MD (@ScottGottliebMD) April 18, 2022
One impressive Twitter thread goes on to explain the entire situation in detail, which I hope to sum up for you. China’s agricultural heartland’s trucking volume is down by over 85% according to the tweet. It goes on to explain, that a third of farmers in three different provinces can’t get fertilizer or seed to plant spring crops. This is because the fertilizer and seed are stuck on cargo ships hanging around the port unable to unload.
In addition to the seed and fertilizer being stuck on cargo ships out in the port, authorities are sealing off access to rural villages. This means that the seed and the fertilizer which can’t get off the ships, even if it could, it wouldn’t make it to the villages since all access has been denied. It gets worse though, local authorities have been arresting farmers for being out on their tractors, in the field, all by themselves. The authorities claim this is due to the zero COVID-19 policy.
Everybody knows about the history of China. Mao’s Great Leap Forward took away farmers from the field and had them busy smelting iron in their backyards. This led to the large famine that enveloped China. What we’re seeing now is the very beginnings of a similar situation that’s going to occur. Perhaps China will be able to avoid this since they have been buying up more than 50% of the world’s grain reserves. However it doesn’t look good. Anytime a country stops its farmers from farming, they put themselves at risk of famine. Read more